Leonard Cohen citations

Page 5

“I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater

and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I’d
never been your lover”

“Dream after dream we all lie in each other's arms”

“I'm not a very nostalgic person. I don't really look at the past and summon up regrets, or self-congratulations, it just is not a mechanism that operates very strongly in me. So I neither have regrets nor occasions for self-congratulations.”

“Love is the only engine of survival”

“.. you wanted to be the Superman who was never Clark Kent”

“I've forgotten most of what I've read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world.”

“When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.”

“Show me slowly what I only
know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love”

“It’s a depressing habit you have of loving to sneeze and of eating apples as if they were juicier for you and being the first one to exclaim how good the movie is. You depress people. We like apples too.”

“In our rags of light, all dressed to kill.”

“It doesn't matter how anything happens.”

“My interest in this pack of failures betrays my character.”

“Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked
By the winds of change and the weeds of sex
looks like freedom but it feels like death
it's something in between, I guess
it's closing time.”

“I am not the one who loves —
It's love that chooses me.
When hatred with his package comes,
You forbid delivery.”

“I will not be held like a drunkard / under the cold tap of facts”

“It's four in the morning, the end of december
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better.”

“Who could have foretold
the heart grows old
from touching others”

“The Maestro says it's Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum when you're waiting for the miracle to come.”

“Stunned and still not suffering. Swollen with care and anxiety and still not suffering. Useless, old and full of grief, but still not suffering.”

“I don't even hate books anymore.”

“I know she is coming
I know she will look
And that is the longing
And this is the book.”

“Believe nothing of me
except that I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.”

“Everything has a crack in it; that's how the light gets in.”

“If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame
If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame

Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came
You want it darker

Hineni, hineni
I'm ready, my Lord”

“I fought against the bottle
but I had to do it drunk”

“The captain called me to his bed and fumbled for my hand
"Take these silver bars," he said, "I'm giving you command."
Command of what? There's no on here. There's only you and me.
The rest are dead or in retreat or with the enemy.
"Complain, complain, that's all you've done ever since we lost,
If it's not the crucifixion then it's the holocaust."”

“Every heart to love will come
But like a refugee.”

“"You have loved enough, now let me be the lover." You could say that God is speaking to you or the cosmos, or your lover. It just means, like, Forget it. Lean back and be loved by all that is already loving you. It is your effort at love that is preventing you from experiencing it. It is like if you ever taught kids how to swim. The most difficult thing is Goddam to understand that they will float, if they relax, if they hold their breath and relax, they will actually float. For most kids it is difficult to swim. They feel they are going to sink like a stone to the bottom of the lake.”

“Here is your cross,
Your nails and your hill;
And here is your love,
That lists where it will”